Early snowfall wreaks havoc in Rockies

Cheyenne, Wyo.  A snow storm that blanketed much of Wyoming, shutting down highways and stranding travelers through the weekend, plowed through Colorado and into western Nebraska early Sunday and set a record for early snowfall in Cheyenne.

The capital city had recorded 10.5 inches of snow by Sunday morning, but warming temperatures through the afternoon were quickly melting the accumulation.

By evening, only a couple of inches of snow remained on the ground in Cheyenne, and green grass poked through the snow in yards across Denver.

The brunt of the storm had pulled down tree branches and caused power outages in Colorado on Saturday night, less than a week after Denver set a temperature record with its 61st day at 90 degrees or above.

In Cheyenne, the last comparable early snowfall hit Sept. 28, 1985, when a storm left 4.9 inches of snow, according to the National Weather Service.

More than 1,200 travelers who had been stranded overnight in Rawlins and Rock Springs some for two days began moving out on Sunday as Interstate 80 was reopened across Wyoming. Stranded trucks parked along both sides of the highway, and the mass exodus caused traffic bottlenecks outside each city, the Wyoming Highway Patrol said.

"We had 15 miles in Rawlins that was nothing but a parking lot for trucks," said Don Brinkman, chairman of the Red Cross branch in Carbon County.

More than 500 travelers spent Saturday night at a Red Cross shelter set up at the Rawlins Family Recreation Center, and about 400 others stayed at the Wyoming National Guard armory in town.

Other traveler ended up in churches and a former train depot after the hotels filled up. Four hundred holed up in Rock Springs at an events complex and a recreation center.

"This town, the whole area, is just bumper to pumper trucks, cars moving vans you name it," said Judy Valentine, Sweetwater County emergency management coordinator, who was in Rock Springs.

Saturday evening, a 12-car pileup on Interstate 80 just east of Laramie delayed a University of Nevada bus and postponed for an hour a football game at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. There were no major injuries.

Tom and Linda Vaught, of Wichita, Kan., had planned to spend a week camping in Yellowstone National Park. Instead they felt lucky just having a hotel room in Laramie.